Project Runway All Stars Season Three, Episode Eight: #The Devil Is Trending!

Terrific. Apparently, this episode is going to be all about those annoying pound signs that are all over the place. Pound sign Things that are popular. Pound sign The Kardashians just did something. Pound sign Get off my lawn, you damn kids, with your Tweeting and your Instagraphs.

ALYSSA: You’re our new fashion blogger? Well, Human Resources certainly has an odd sense of humor. Follow me. OK, so Nina eliminated the last two fashion bloggers after only a few weeks. We need to find a blogger who can survive here. Do you understand?

Yes. Of course. Who’s Nina?

ALYSSA: Oh, my God. I will pretend you did not just ask me that. She’s the editor of Marie Claire, not to mention a legend. A million bloggers would kill for this opportunity. 

[Alyssa gets a call]

ALYSSA: Oh my god. No! No! No!

What's wrong?

ALYSSA: She's on her way! Tell everyone!

But, she wasn’t supposed to be here until 9:00.

ALYSSA: Her driver just text messaged and her facialist ruptured a disc. God, these people!

All right, everyone, gird your loins!

[Nina enters]

NINA: Tell Simone I’m not going to approve that girl that she sent me for the Brazilian layout. I asked for clean, athletic, and smiling. She sent me dirty, tired, and paunchy. And RSVP Yes to the Michael Kors party. I want the driver to drop me off at 9:30 and pick me up at 9:45 sharp. Call Natalie at Glorious Foods and tell her No, for the 40th time. No, I don’t want dacquoise. I want tortes filled with warm rhubarb compote. Tell Richard I saw the pictures that he sent for that feature on the female paratroopers and they’re all so deeply unattractive. Is it impossible to find a lovely, slender female paratrooper? Am I reaching for the stars here? Not really. Is there some reason I don’t have my coffee? Has my assistant died? And who are these people?

ALYSSA: Oh, nobody. They’re just the remaining All Stars. I’ll narrow them down to the finalists.

NINA: Clearly I’m going to have to do that myself, because the job you’ve been doing so far is completely inadequate. Have them create their looks and I’ll decide. That’s all.

So, the designers go to Mood and meet their fashion bloggers, who will be their models. Seth Aaron creates a tight color-blocked dress, which is nice but not trendsetting. Elena creates a peplum jacket that uses a very interesting textile technique but is way out of proportion for her tiny model. Viktor creates a beautiful leather jacket and pairs it with a weird black dress. Christopher creates an olive-drab lace trench dress. Korto is the clear winner, with a terrific white suit that needed only some adjustment to the hem of the pant. Nina is disappointed in the other designers:

NINA: I asked one thing of you. I asked you to get me the next Harry Potter book for my boys and you failed me.

CHRISTOPHER: There is no next Harry Potter book! The series ended!

NINA: The details of your incompetence do not interest me.

Christopher is safe. Viktor is out because Nina had to sacrifice him in order to save her own job. You see, Viktor was supposed to have gotten the job as creative director with fashion star James Holt, but then it turned out Jacqueline Folette, the editor of the French edition of Marie Claire, was about to take over Nina’s position so Nina had to give the Holt job to Jacqueline instead. It was all very shocking, but Viktor took it in stride. He knows that some day, when the time is right, she’ll make it up to him.

Oh, I forgot to mention that they were supposed to be predicting a trend for 2014 and also using the color pink.

NINA: Excuse me? Pink?

Yeah. Wasn’t it pink? To be honest, when you started talking about panettone I got hungry and I wasn’t paying attention to this stuff.

NINA: This ... stuff? Oh. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your local Trader Joe’s and you select ... I don't know ... that panettone with the dried fruit that comes in the pink box, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself seriously. But what you don't know is that that box is not just pink. It's not fuchsia. It's not magenta. It's actually the panettone color of the year for 2014, radiant orchid. And you're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002 Oscar de la Renta did a collection of radiant orchid gowns. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent who showed radiant orchid military jackets. And then radiant orchid quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where someone, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin and used it for food packaging. However, that pink represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're eating panettone out of a box that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff.

Nina says That's all